Bush and Blair defend need for Iraq ‘victory’

These guys are really too much for color TeeVee


FT.com / World / Middle East & Africa - Bush and Blair defend need for Iraq ‘victory’:


Tony Blair announced a mission to the Middle East on Thursday as he tried to use the damning Iraq Study Group report to drive US president George W. Bush into a new peace initiative for the region.

At a joint press conference, the British prime minister and Mr Bush showed few signs of accepting the repudiation of their Iraq policies by the Iraq Study Group. They defended the need for victory and remained committed to promoting democracy in the Middle East.

The group had called the situation in Iraq “grave and deteriorating”, but Mr Bush, making his first public response to the report at the press conference, used less pessimistic language, conceding that the death toll in Baghdad was “unsettling”.

Both leaders sought to frame the debate about Iraq as a long-term ideological struggle between Islamic extremists and moderates, and emphasised the need to defend fledgling democracies in Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan.